“In order to defeat your enemy you must know your enemy”. Unfortunately, the Indian air force never even tried to understand their enemy.
People like to troll the Indian air force, including myself. However, we have the understand, the Indian air force is not bad at all. They have a large budget, they bought the best gears available on the international market. They trained with the Americans, French, British, and Russians. They were constantly engaging in wars with Pakistan. How could be they be bad, they can probably beat most of the air forces with ease. However, that’s where their understanding stops. "The west is always superior, as long as they can keep up, the only advantage the PLAAF has over them are numbers."
On the other hand, the PLAAF had to think about what if the US gathering over a dozen of countries, including India attacking China like in the 1950s every single night. PLAAF bought the top of line Russian gears just to study India, and Vietnam. Even the AWACS Indian bought from Israel was originally built to the spec, requested by China.
PLAAF aimed to be the strongest air force, if not, at least they must be able to stop the strongest air force. IAF’s understanding of what is the best air force is dictated and permanently capped by the information they received by western narratives, sometimes they are almost mythology level.
This is the information India receives everyday. They calculate all the parameters and comes to a conclusion.
However, PLAAF is constantly trying to rewrite the rules. Good luck have fun.